How He Lost
by apathyburger
Summary: Post X2. You're very good at watching him walk away. How He Lost


_"He who asks questions can not avoid the answers," African proverb_

St. John slept with the girls because that was he supposed to do. In their eyes it wasn't hard to find the same desperate anger and self-loathing that he had found in his mother's long ago, before he stopped looking. But when you came, he stopped and hasn't found a reason to find another girl sleep with and there have been some coming and leaving the community that called itself Eden.

He left his home when he was sixteen because he couldn't think of a better reason to stay and had memorized the codes of his father's bank accounts long ago. He turned his back on his family or what remained of, the shell that kept up appearances and went to all the right parties where he'd find himself in bathrooms with mirrors for walls and would watch him slip his hand under girls' skirts and up their shirts.

It took him a few months to find Eden. Most others were invited, picked up, broke out from jails. He had shown up at the front gate and no one knew his name or how he knew to go there. He smoked two cigarettes as they debated whether to invite him in or not and whether anyone given directions by Erik Lensherr was worth keeping around. When you came here a few months later, he found you a day or two after the fragile feeling left and you started to see which pieces fit together. He sat next to you on a bench, cracked his knuckles, and the both of you watched the younger kids play Cops and Robbers. He handed you a copy of The Alchemist, shrugged and left.

It's been a few months since he left and now you've found him, spinning the circle of habit into the opposite direction. Grungy piano bars in Philly never seemed like they would be his thing but then, you never thought that you might sneak off from a class trip and go drink dinner. Birthdays are like that. You and him at the bar not saying anything until he gets up and leaves and you grab your jacket and follow.

He turns half way and speaks to the wall of the alley because he chose to make his escape through a fire door. "I was hoping you would follow but… whatever." You can't think of anything to say because he'd probably laugh at sorry. He finds a crumbled cigarette in a pocket of his jeans and lights it, keeping the ember burning on the tip of his finger so his face is lit from underneath. "It was four hundred and fifty two steps to the other clearing. And I walked slow so if you wanted to, you could have caught up."

"I… I would have…."

"But for true love."

"I- it's not like that."

"Then how is it? You guys grind through clothes and everyone walks away happy?"

"John-"

"Whatever." And he stares at the wall like it's going to show him the answers and you want to ask what he's been doing since Magneto doesn't seem to be anywhere and the trashcan to your left doesn't have breasts or a voice like a synthesizer. You touch the base of his neck and slide your fingers up naked skin to small peak of hair. He shivers and bends his head down. You squeeze his neck and then lower your hand under the collar of his shirt, to depression between his shoulder blades, and he doesn't move away. You stand there like that, your hand holding him and him holding the cigarette and not noticing as the flame brushed against his fingers. Like old times. "Did you ever read it?" he asks after he lets his cigarette drops and the both of your watch the ember die against a dented beer can.

"More times that you know."

"And what do you think?"

"It was good. I still have it." You carried it around for a month and a half and the spine is broken beyond repair from being shoved into book-bag, back pocket and under pillow.

"Keep it. I bought another copy." John turns and your hands trickles across his collarbone to shoulder and you hold on. He leans against the wall, displaying yet again his ability to balance gravity and his own desires. When you came John started listening in class, started watching your hands and your eyes for signs of something he had found in himself. "When something evolves everything around that thing evolves as well," he quotes and you can't think of the next line. You push your hand against his shirt, the wrong way, running back to the warm hollow of his neck. He brings his chin back and brushes his lips against the tendon holding your thumb to your forefinger, pushing against taunt skin.

"Stay. Come back. Please? With me?"

"Anyone who interferes with the destiny of another thing will not discover his own. Remember? And I'd hate for you to wander."

"St. John."

"Pyro." He looks at your eyes now and you see what he found in you and what was lost. And once again you can't follow as he walks away, rubbing his hand against the back of his neck where your cold fingers touched.

Paulo Coelho wrote the Alchemist


End file.
